Hello everyone!
Today, I am partnering with Simon and Schuster and some other bloggers in the Summer Fiction Blog Tour to bring you all a bunch of highly anticipated books of the year, over the course of 5 weeks with 5 different bloggers!
This is the last week, of the tour and we are all sharing our reviews of In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. Thanks so much to Simon and Schuster for sending me an ARC of this book for an honest review. As always, all opinions are my own.
In a Dark, Dark Wood is one of the most atmospheric books I've read in a long time. After reading blurbs on the back of the book about not starting it before bed, and prepare to be afraid, I went into it a little weary. I started it before bed after reading all these "warnings" and was just bracing myself.
I felt on edge the whole time because it starts out so normal. Leonora is invited to her old best friend, Clare's hen do, or bachelorette party. It's more of a bachelorette weekend, really, in Clare's new best friend Flo's aunt's summer house in the country. This all sounds great, but then you find out Clare and Leonora haven't spoken in 10 years, the house is in the middle of nowhere with no phone reception, the getaway weekend is in November, AND Clare is marrying, unannounced to Nora, Nora's childhood sweetheart, James, who dumbed her over text ten years ago when they were sixteen. Needless to say, there's a lot of skeletons in the closet for everyone, and its a bit of a tense situation.
Obviously there was quite a bit of drama, and as a reader, you are just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. The group goes on an outing to a shooting range, all organized by the slightly neurotic perfectionist Flo who NEEDS this weekend to go well. She's obsessed with Clare, to the point of wearing the same clothes she does. Anyways, this is clearly a weird activity for a bachelorette party, at least in my mind.
After a couple of days, Nora and one of the other friends she came up with Nina, have had enough and want to leave. They promise each other they will go the next morning, but the events of that night change everything. I will stop with the plot summary because I really think you need to experience this all first hand.
Anyways, the rest of the story is told from Nora, in her hospital bed, trying to remember what happened and being questioned by the police. I really liked that even though Nora is a suspect, they are all suspects in the murder, she fights her brain to try and remember, not just to clear her own name but to know what happened. A lot of time with unreliable "amnesiac" narrators, they don't want to remember. They fear they may be guilty (there's always a crime committed) and they would rather forget than remember. Nora wants to remember, NEEDS to remember. She goes to crazy extremes to jog her memory, because this is personal to her, but not in the way you might think.
As with 99% of thrillers these days, this book has been compared to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. I've yet to read Gone Girl, but I read TGOTT and I feel like the only comparisons are that they are told by unreliable narrators and are set in England. To me, each thriller is kind of it's own. This one is a fairly slow burn, but as previously mentioned, it kept me on the edge of my seat. Even when I finished it, I was thoroughly creeped out. It really goes to show that you have no idea what anyone, even your closest friend is capable of.
Overall, this was a crazy book that really put you in the story. The writing was lyrical and sucked you in. I definitely recommend!
I felt on edge the whole time because it starts out so normal. Leonora is invited to her old best friend, Clare's hen do, or bachelorette party. It's more of a bachelorette weekend, really, in Clare's new best friend Flo's aunt's summer house in the country. This all sounds great, but then you find out Clare and Leonora haven't spoken in 10 years, the house is in the middle of nowhere with no phone reception, the getaway weekend is in November, AND Clare is marrying, unannounced to Nora, Nora's childhood sweetheart, James, who dumbed her over text ten years ago when they were sixteen. Needless to say, there's a lot of skeletons in the closet for everyone, and its a bit of a tense situation.
Obviously there was quite a bit of drama, and as a reader, you are just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. The group goes on an outing to a shooting range, all organized by the slightly neurotic perfectionist Flo who NEEDS this weekend to go well. She's obsessed with Clare, to the point of wearing the same clothes she does. Anyways, this is clearly a weird activity for a bachelorette party, at least in my mind.
After a couple of days, Nora and one of the other friends she came up with Nina, have had enough and want to leave. They promise each other they will go the next morning, but the events of that night change everything. I will stop with the plot summary because I really think you need to experience this all first hand.
Anyways, the rest of the story is told from Nora, in her hospital bed, trying to remember what happened and being questioned by the police. I really liked that even though Nora is a suspect, they are all suspects in the murder, she fights her brain to try and remember, not just to clear her own name but to know what happened. A lot of time with unreliable "amnesiac" narrators, they don't want to remember. They fear they may be guilty (there's always a crime committed) and they would rather forget than remember. Nora wants to remember, NEEDS to remember. She goes to crazy extremes to jog her memory, because this is personal to her, but not in the way you might think.
As with 99% of thrillers these days, this book has been compared to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. I've yet to read Gone Girl, but I read TGOTT and I feel like the only comparisons are that they are told by unreliable narrators and are set in England. To me, each thriller is kind of it's own. This one is a fairly slow burn, but as previously mentioned, it kept me on the edge of my seat. Even when I finished it, I was thoroughly creeped out. It really goes to show that you have no idea what anyone, even your closest friend is capable of.
Overall, this was a crazy book that really put you in the story. The writing was lyrical and sucked you in. I definitely recommend!
This is the last week of the blog tour but don't forget to check out the Simon and Schuster's Read Chill Repeat website for more info on previous books, and to enter for a chance to win a set of books + one year of free coffee from Aroma Espresso Bar, the contest ends on July 16!